Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1982)

The character of Sweeney Todd had its origins in serialized Victorian popular fiction, known as “penny dreadfuls”. A story called The String of Pearls was published in a weekly magazine during the winter of 1846–47. Set in 1785, the story featured as its principal villain a certain Sweeney Todd and included all the plot elements that were used by Sondheim and others ever since. The murderous barber’s story proved instantly popular – it was turned into a play before the ending had even been revealed in print. An expanded edition appeared in 1850, an American version in 1852, a new play in 1865. By the 1870s, Sweeney Todd was a familiar character to most Victorians.

Sondheim’s musical was, in fact, based on Christopher Bond’s 1973 spooky melodrama, which introduced a psychological background to Todd’s crimes. In Bond’s reincarnation of the character, Todd was the victim of a ruthless judge who raped his young wife and exiled him to Australia. Sondheim first conceived of a musical version of the story in 1973, after he went to see Bond’s ghoulish take on the story at Theatre Royal Stratford East.